Important events on February 10-14

15:28 07.02.2020

Flipping the page

The theme of the last week has been Coronavirus. It did suppress stock markets to a certain extent, especially in China, and made them tilt towards safe-haven currencies in Forex. In general, however, the negative consequences of the virus outbreak have been mostly shaken off by the market. To investors, this event may have even brought an unexpected opportunity to buy stocks at lower prices, which would otherwise keep rising. More to that, to facilitate the resumption of normal economic functioning, China lowered tariffs to the US goods, which would otherwise stay barred as a lasting legacy of the two-years trade war. None of that helps over 30,000 infected people, of course, but apparently, no tragedy comes without an ironic benefit on the flip side of the event.

Long live the Queen

Now as Brexit is done and December 2020 is 11 months away, the British economy has 11 months to adapt to new conditions. In the meantime, the UK Prime Minister is doing his best to reconfigure the UK’s trade bonds to step into the future on a better note. Whether the US-UK trade agreement to come helps that – we are yet to see, but the objective indicator of the economy will stay as it has always been: production. Hence, GDP will be a good marker of the progress. Tuesday will bring us the preliminary monthly GDP, which refers to the month of December. Hence, we will have a clear picture of how the British economy concluded the year and on which note it has entered 2020. That will give us hints on how the GBP will behave.

How Kiwi is doing?

We do not pay as much attention to the actions of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, but it makes sense to do that. The NZD was very much boosted the last time the monetary policy makers made their interest rate announcement. Hence, if there were reasons for a hawkish move that time, Wednesday may bring a similar picture. That may be even a stronger possibility due to the fact that – once again, a tragic irony being played out well by the currencies – Australia still needs to recover from the bushfires. Consequently, the shaken AUD leaves a lot of space for the NZD to gain weight. Let’s see what the RBNZ brings to the table.

Nothing about America?

But of course, we cannot leave the US aside. On Thursday, the monthly CPI will be announced, shedding light on the price situation, and on Friday, retails sales will be announced. Obviously, no major movement of the USD should be expected (unless the market gets surprised on either of the indicators) as it normally is on the NFP day. But still, these announcements may give interesting opportunities to open positions with the USD.